Retweet of the Day - August 7, 2012

Future Hall of Fame NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens was signed by the Seattle Seahwaks to a one year, $1 million deal today. Owens played his last down in the NFL during a personally productive 2010 season (72 rec., 972 yds., 9 TD, 14 games played) with the collectively bad (4-12) Cincinnati Bengals. Owens injured his knee late in the 2010 season and missed the entire 2011 season rehabing from surgery to repair the ACL in the knee.

Since then, his money problems have been much publicized. Owens has appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, admitting that after earning $80 million in his playing career, he is broke. So, of course, the Twittersphere was loaded with poor jokes directed at Terrell Owens. Take this dandy, by Blaise Miller ‏(@Blaise_in_KC)


"The Seattle Seahawks say Terrell Owens will be working out for the team today, as soon as he borrows enough money for bus fare to get there."

I guess he borrowed $1 bills.

Image from http://blogs.thescore.com

What Happens Now to the Tampa Bay Rays? Another cash casualty

I have made no secret, in personal conversations, that I prefer professional sporting events to amateur events. Professional athletes are the best of the best in the entire world in their areas of skill. The competition cannot be more intense. Often, winners and losers are decided by inches, not feet. However, the one undeniable advantage that college and other amateur athletics have over the pros is that money cannot directly alter the games or the makeup of the teams participating in college athletics.

At least college athletes cannot be corrupted with money. Or CAN they? 1

In Major League Baseball, money appears to dictate everything, for the worse. The Tampa Bay Rays, winners of the American League pennant in 2008 and heavy favorite to advance to the World Series in 2010 (with the American League's best regular season record), lost game 5 of a five game series with the Texas Rangers. The Rays have been baseball's shining example of doing less with more. The Rays play in a small television market, have low attendance, and have a payroll just over $70 million. They moved from the long term cellar of the American League to front runner with a crafty manager and a very effective farm, making prospects into stars.

Longoria, Upton, and Crawford - one of these people will not belong...next year. 2

Star players Evan Longoria, B.J. Upton, and Carl Crawford were acquired by the Rays not through dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the free agency market, but by effective scouting and recruiting. This takes hard work, baseball skill, strategy, and research. Teams such as the "Evil Empire" of MLB free agency, the New York Yankees, and their closer competitors, all but use other major league teams as their own personal farm system. They watch the young stars grow, then offer them so much money that they cannot refuse the offer and the small market teams, that discovered these players, are left with nothing after six seasons, no matter what efforts are made to retain these players.

Teams like the Yankees, which pick the bones off of teams that have developed prospects into major league stars, are responsible for two undesirable fates for franchises. One result is a team like the Rays, which build themselves into contenders from scratch, only to be forced to start over and reload after a few seasons because their young stars are eligible for free agency. The other result is a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mark Teixeira, C.C. Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett - for a couple of hundred mil, they (and a pennant) can be yours!

The Pirates were a once proud franchise that could expect to be in pennant races and World Series matchups every so many years. The Pirates have not been to the playoffs since the 1992 National League Championship Series. They have essentially spent the past 18 seasons playing their minor league call-ups in front of mostly empty stadiums after the All-Star break. The Pirates have survived and remained profitable by waiting for their revenue sharing check to land in the mail. It is like welfare for professional sports franchises!

Irrelevant franchises and franchises with three year windows of opportunity to win a World Series as a reward for recruiting dynasty-caliber talent are bad. They are bad for baseball. They are bad for all but the wealthiest franchises. And they are bad for the average baseball fan. This is not lost on fans, who continue to be treated as lemmings by the leadership of Major League Baseball.

As mentioned previously, the Rays had the American League's best record in 2010, yet ranked near the bottom of the major leagues in attendance, even in the waning weeks of the season while engaged in a tightly contested battle for the American League East division title. How many fans are going to be fired up to hand their hard-earned money over to the Rays for season tickets or partial packages in the regular season when the core of the team will not be together after the playoffs? Why get too excited and emotionally (and financially) invested in a team that plans to break itself up and sell of the parts, so to speak? Sure, people will show up for playoff games because they are very meaningful. But the attendance problems, which begin with ticket package sales, in Tampa are not going away until the fans see long term value in return for their time and money.

Unless they scout and draft to perfection, we will never see a uniform like that on a player like this (or any player participating in the post season or in front of a home sellout) ever again.

 

The solution is simple. It is a remarkable concept that has brought parity to the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. It is called a SALARY CAP! By capping the total payroll for all teams, owners of each team are all playing on a level field with the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and any other big market club. It is understandable why players, who want to get paid, are not going to make a push for a salary cap. It is understandable that a minority of owners, those in mega media markets, would fight tooth and nail to avoid a salary cap. You cannot buy your way to the top if you cannot outspend your competition.

MLB cities can hope.

1) Image from Punting on Third (scottbergen.blogspot.com)
2) Image from sportsillustrated.com
3) Image from Joe's Locker Room (joeslockerroom.wordpress.com)
4) Image from mitchellandness.com

The Love of Money Is the Root of All Evil...Player Lockouts

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The popularity of the National Football League is at an all time high. The majority of NFL stadiums are sold out every week. Television ratings and advertising revenues are at an all time high. The most recent Super Bowl, the New Orleans Saints victory over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami, was the highest rated television program of all time, higher than any other Super Bowl, even higher than the last episode of M*A*S*H. 

Conventional wisdom would dictate that life must be very good for anyone who is a part of the NFL. Player salaries are higher than ever. Ticket revenues rise on an annual basis. However the pursuit of collective interests of the two parties that must come together to make America's great gridiron game possible, players and owners, threaten to derail present-day America's pastime. 

In any collective bargaining agreement, there is never one simple panacea. There are always multiple issues and multiple moving parts, all of which, directly or indirectly, influence the other moving parts. However, the issue that is most frequently raised in the mainstream sports media is the possibility of an 18 game regular season schedule.

The basic arguments have been positioned to the public. The fans do not like preseason. Season ticket holders do not like paying for two preseason games at the same cost of regular season tickets. Players will contend that football is a physically brutal game. Increasing the number of games by 11% will shorten careers and water down the product on the field due to the increased probability of injury. Owners will contend that by removing two preseason games and making them regular season games, the players will not be committed to any additional obligations to their teams and the fans will be more satisfied. 

As a fan, from my vantage point, the only winner I see in this entire equation, with two games being added and no subsequent concessions, is ownership. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has often positioned the possible 18 game schedule as a change in the best interests of the fans. Quote ESPN commentator Lee Corso, "NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND!". 

The USA Today published a poll this summer asking fans if they supported an 18 game schedule. Nearly two thirds of the respondents did not respond favorably to this change. Perhaps the average fan thinks with more depth than, "I want more football! Football's good!" Perhaps the reality that there will be more meaningless games later in the season, more injured players (resulting in less skilled players on the field more often), and individual regular season games carrying less meaning, is not lost on the average fan. And while the average person may not be able to empathize with the finances of player earning a minimum salary of over $300,000 per season, anyone should be able to empathize with a human being not wanting to do more work for the same amount of money. 

  

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What the average fan may not know is that most players earn closer to the minimum salary than the seven and eight figured salaries that many of the elite stars of the game earn. The average fan may not realize how short the average player career is. MSN recently ran an article citing the average NFL career at three years. 4  I personally have heard estimates on talk radio closer to four years. Regardless, it takes the average NFL player longer to prepare for the NFL, playing college football, than that player will be able to play in the NFL.

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Taking these career metrics into account, the life of an NFL player sounds like it may be good while it lasts, fun while it lasts, and may give young men the opportunity to start their lives with a healthy financial foundation, but it is far from buying a winning lottery ticket. So how can players and owners reconcile their conflict of interests?

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

One may think that I am living in a land of candy canes and gumdrop forests if I think that owners will simply back away from their idea of an 18 game schedule. Just because the present 16 game model, in place since 1978, has been immensely successful, many fans are cool to the possibility of an 18 game schedule, and Roger Goodell, who has played the role of consummate innovator in the interest of growing his product,  has made it clear that he wants an 18 game schedule does not mean that is is an inevitability, right?

WRONG! Roger Goodell, from my vantage point, appears to have the full support of ownership in nearly all of his initiatives What Sheriff Goodell wants, Sheriff Goodell usually gets. So barring a miraculous visit from a muse, inspiring Goodell to do what is in the best interests of the quality of the game (according to the views of fans and players), the solution is not to fight the 18 game schedule, but to gain the most from agreeing to play the longer schedule. 

18 Games? Okay! PAY ME!

NFL players exist in an extremely competitive work environment with absolutely no job security. Players should consider the possible 18 game schedule as an opportunity to gain some or all of the following concessions in exchange for a longer regular season.

Guaranteed Salaries

The NFL, far and away, is the most popular of America's four major team sports, football, basketball, baseball, and hockey. Yet its players, on average, earn much less than the players in any other sports and are the only professional athletes of this group without guaranteed salaries. Now I do not have any fancy degrees (well, actually, I have an MBA, but I digress), but most "contracts" involve a service and terms of that service for a specified period of time. The party providing the service is committing a fixed period of its time in exchange for compensation and, if terminated without cause prior to the end of that time, it is entitled to collect payment for the entire committed period, less any earnings during that period, collected in a good faith effort to mitigate the damage of the early termination. In short - you fire me; you PAY me!

The NFL works a little differently. Players commit their services for a fixed period of time. They receive an irrevocable signing bonus, usually a fraction (less than half) of the total value of the contract, provided the player performs as dictated in the contract. No matter what a player does to uphold his end of the bargain, owners may terminate that player at any time for any reason and not pay another dime. Players may resign at any time also, but they are on the hook to pay back a prorated portion of their signing bonuses. Sounds fair, doesn't it?

The owners stand to gain substantial revenues from an 18 game schedule. They appear to want it badly. Agreeing to this extended schedule appears to be the players' best bargaining chip to gain the long coveted financial security of guaranteed salaries.

Increased Roster Spots

One may think, "Guarantee roster spots? If I am a current NFL player, how would that benefit ME?" The answer is: "plenty". The three year average career of an NFL player is short for a number of reasons. Injuries, in such a violent game, are certainly a major cause of career brevity. However, in the hyper-competitive NFL workplace, younger, faster, bigger, and stronger rookies are brought into NFL training camps every year. The man who caught a break and got to live out his boyhood dream three years ago now has to enter the real world. While increased roster spots will provide a number of benefits to players (such as reducing the risk of injury because more players can be rotated in during certain game situations) the greatest benefit is more total job openings, resulting in more opportunities to continue a playing career.

Premium Across-the-Board Salary Increases

The owners' response to players' concerns about salaries with an 18 game regular season may be to increase current salaries proportionately. However, the risks that players assume to their long term health and football career prospects, to me, would be exponentially greater than 11%. Bodies experience more ware and would seem more vulnerable to injury with each game played, without an extended period of rest. An across the board annual salary increase of 20%, for example, on existing player contracts would be a welcome windfall for players and a morale preserver for owners. Such a premium, whatever such a premium would be, seems like a small price to pay in exchange for transitioning to a new, more lucrative, regular season schedule in the long run. Most players contracts will be completely expired and up for negotiation within a few years and only the most elite players have the negotiating leverage to build upon a premium salary increase. The vast majority of players will have to accept relatively little more than the league minimum salary for their corresponding years of service. Of course, bargaining for an increase in the minimum salary levels may also be incorporated into salary increase negotiations. 

Just Play Ball!

At the end of the day, the players, owners, and fans all want to see the highest level of professional football. Almost everything in life is a trade off. Anyone, even wealthy and powerful, billionaire franchise owners, have to give something of value if they expect to receive anything of value in return. The average fan may not be able to relate to an NFL player because the player is an elite physical specimen in a high paying glamor job that almost anyone that fan will ever be acquainted with will never have an opportunity to experience. However, players are human beings. They are not robots. They share the same goals that fans have of providing as much for their families and themselves as they are able to. If all parties involved play ball and give a little to get a little, so to speak, then everyone can win: players, owners, and fans. 

1) Image from http://willybova.com/FatCat.jpg

2) Image from sutterstock.com
3) NFL shield is a trademark of the National Football League image from http://thecapitalsportsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/nfl-logo.jpg
4) http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/retirementandwills/escapetheratrace/p100986.asp
5) Image from http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/money.jpg
6) Image from http://www.happynews.com/living/livingimages/how-safe-football.jpg